Carlos Garaicoa

Cuban , 1967
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Carlos Garaicoa is an installation artist and photographer who began his career in the 1990s. Best known for his use of images making references to architecture, real and imaginary, his work often alludes to re-inventions of cities in various states of decay. For Garaicoa, the architecture of Havana became symbolic of the tenuous state of his homeland where many buildings are falling apart. The crumbling of buildings in the city unleashed his desire for utopian projects with architectural solutions.

Using a multidisciplinary approach, Carlos Garaicoa has been working since the early 1990s to comment on architecture's historical function, re-thinking the role of urban environments. Garaicoa uses the city of Havana as his subject matter in order to illustrate the failure of the political system by depicting imaginary architectural systems overlaid with the impoverished reality.

Garaicoa has been exhibited at numerous venues and in many different contexts worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, MOCA Los Angeles, Documenta XI, and the 51st Venice Biennale, Havana Biennial (V,VI,VII), and the São Paolo Biennial (XXI, XXVI). He is represented by the Continua Gallery (Italy), Galería Elba Benítez (Spain), and Luisa Strina Gallery (São Paulo). His work is included in museum collections including the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Tate Modern, London; The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York, and private collections worldwide.

“The conception of history as a fictitious element and its reconstruction, taking into account its implications in relation to the urban space, is the basis for most of my work.” - Carlos Garaicoa